UNITED STATES
Truthout
Friday, 25 September 2015
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
So this guy in white robes showed up at the Capitol Building in Washington DC on Thursday, and the freak-out was comprehensive. Some 5,000 law enforcement officials were brought to bear in the name of “security” for the visit by Pope Francis, a number that sits in the shade of the 7,000 law enforcement officials prepared for his arrival in New York City. Both towns are effectively shut down; fences up, fences everywhere.
The pope’s speech before a joint session of congress was riveting television. The crowds outside were huge, and hugely enthusiastic. The cameras flashed to various crowd shots, one including Senator Ted Cruz looking like an extra from “Grease,” with Chris Matthews on MSNBC claiming that suddenly-retiring and very weepy House Speaker John Boehner “wanted personal help from the pope” at one notable point. Ponder that a moment.
The only person Francis personally greeted when he entered the chamber was John Kerry. When the pontiff assumed the podium, Speaker Boehner shook his hand and said, “Good luck.” It was not a jocular statement; Boehner delivered it in the tones of a World War I officer ordering a doughboy over the side of a trench and into machine-gun fire.
Pope Francis defended working people and retired people, invoked Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, defended religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms while denouncing the “simplistic reductionism that sees only good or evil,” defended immigrants and immigration, made a stout argument in favor of the reality of climate change, described the profits made from weapons sales as “money drenched in blood,” and kicked the death penalty square in the ass.
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